Scotland’s Future

The Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies invited Michael Russell, the Scottish Parliament’s Minister for Education and Life-long Learning, to address a lecture in Dunedin while he was in New Zealand for a conference on education. He arrived with a copy of the Scottish block-buster Scotland’s Future and demonstrated how he has been flourishing it around Scotland like a revivalist preacher. A solid creed.

Dunedin put on a welcome for the Scottish minister, wind and rain that meant my shoes have been wet all day. The lecture was a little slow in starting. Bigger than usual representation of young migrant Scots in the audience too. They had their say when it came to question time.

The trickiest question the minister quoted was, Would Edward Snowden be given asylum in an independent Scotland. As he has already been elected rector of Edinburgh University for 2014 there’s already a job opening for him.

The question on the table for the lecture remains the same as the referendum, 200 days away: Should Scotland be an independent country?

What I noted of his argument was from his portfolio. The Scottish Parliament has a ministry committed to youth employment. Education should not leave the learner poor. Even if the autonomous parliament has oversight restraints remain on education opportunities that is controlled from Westminster. Don’t lean on a nation as thrawn as the Scots and tell them what they cannot do! There are 10 million hands in Scotland.

The No-campaign is mired in the history of Scottish politics It has not taken up the third option: to argue for the possibility of a new union of the five nations of Britain: England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and London. The Unionists need to present new ideas.